Phil Anselmo: New Orleans Raised Metal's Most Dangerous Voice

New Orleans Raised Metal's Most Dangerous Voice

Philip Hansen Anselmo was born on June 30, 1968, in New Orleans, Louisiana — Italian, French, and Danish blood running through a kid who would grow up to become one of the most ferocious vocalists in heavy metal history. He attended Grace King High School in Metairie but dropped out in the twelfth grade. School couldn't hold him. Music could.

In 1986, at eighteen years old, Anselmo joined a Texas band called Pantera as their new lead singer. What happened next changed heavy metal forever. With Anselmo on vocals and the Abbott brothers — Dimebag Darrell and Vinnie Paul — providing the heaviest riffs in the genre, Pantera released Cowboys from Hell in 1990, Vulgar Display of Power in 1992, and Far Beyond Driven in 1994. Far Beyond Driven debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 — a metal album, at number one, in the middle of the grunge era. That doesn't happen by accident.

The Sound of New Orleans Nobody Expected

Pantera defined groove metal — a subgenre that merged thrash aggression with a swinging, almost funky rhythmic sensibility. And that swing? That came from New Orleans. Anselmo grew up in a city where rhythm is the foundation of everything, where the second line beat is in the air and the bounce is in the pavement. He channeled that rhythmic DNA through the heaviest possible amplifiers.

Beyond Pantera, Anselmo formed Down in 1991 — a southern metal supergroup with Pepper Keenan of Corrosion of Conformity and members of Crowbar and Eyehategod. Down was explicitly a New Orleans band, soaked in sludge, humidity, and the low-end rumble that defines the city's heavy music scene. He also co-founded Superjoint Ritual, launched Housecore Records, and created a half-dozen other projects that kept pushing the boundaries of extreme music.

Still Standing

Anselmo battled heroin addiction and severe back injuries through the late 1990s and early 2000s — demons that nearly killed him and contributed to Pantera's breakup. He achieved sobriety by 2005 and has continued making music from rural Louisiana ever since. Phil Anselmo proved that New Orleans doesn't just make jazz and R&B — it makes the heaviest, meanest, most uncompromising music on the planet, and it does it with a groove that no other city can replicate.